Monday, December 10, 2012

A New Kind of Homewrecking

Upon this year's Thanksgiving, the things to be thankful for stood out more starkly than ever. The support of friends, a hot meal, a hot shower, the love of your spouse. These things are so simple, but such contrast to the hell we've been dealing with.

It's been six weeks since the hurricane Sandy storm surge swept through Red Hook. We're one of the lucky ones, you could say. The water filled our basement, but spared our first floor workspace and our second floor apartment. Neighbors only a block or two away took on four, five feet of water on the first floor. Homes and businesses, destroyed.

Still here we are six weeks later with no heat, no hot water. Still going through the depressing chore of sorting through damp storage containers to salvage what's left of soggy wedding albums and old photos. Things you just can't replace. I've done my best to embrace the bright side: less old crap to lug around through life! I'm pretty sure I didn't need to hang on to every love note passed between classes in high school or those fuzzy VHS tapes of my college band. And now that my grandmother's sewing machine is junk, I no longer feel the pressure to learn how to use it.

For ten days following the storm, our block had no power. Everything in our fridge spoiled and a smelly brown ooze trickled across our kitchen floor, reminding me that our deadbeat landlord has yet to replace our leaky fridge. Our home no longer felt like home, but rather a cold, messy storage facility for all the junk we've collected over time. Homewrecker, that Sandy.

While the power was out, we were refugees, fortunate enough to have friends across town with a comfortable futon to take us in. I guess we were good house guests because they still let us visit for hot showers every few days and even had us over for a vegan Thanksgiving where I impressed us all by whipping up this vegan gluten-free pumpkin pie.

The hurricane forced us to stop dead in our tracks. I didn't go to the office for two weeks. Our food truck business shut down. While we tried to catch our breath, we began to reevaluate.

I've come out on the other side of this realizing how very badly the past two years of non-stop entrepreneurship, working two jobs and completely neglecting pretty much everything else -- neglecting my own well-being for sure -- has made me miss, well, me.

So with that in mind, 2013 is going to be a year where Mr. Homewrecker and I refocus on taking care of ourselves, honing our true talents (maybe flipping burgers and truck maintenance ain't it), and reigniting our love of homemaking.

Sandy was the ultimate homewrecker for us. I can't top the damage she did with my own kitchen mishaps and wilty houseplants. She wins. With that said, I don't see myself writing much more for Home Sweet Homewrecker. I started this blog when I was single, living with roommates, and barely knew how to poach an egg. Ok, I still don't really excel at poaching eggs, but moving into my own apartment, living with a boyfriend for the first time, getting married, moving more times than I'd like, starting a food business, and then seeing my home kicked in the shins by mother nature have taught me so much about how to make a house (or a 3rd floor walk up, or a studio apartment) a home. Now I'm going to focus on finding the next place to call home, and do just that.

If you miss me, I'll still be updating my Tumblr with stupid asides and links from other ongoing projects. Thanks, everyone, for reading.

What is Home Sweet Homewrecker?

A chronicle of my failures and my successes, but more often my failures, on my quest to become a domestic goddess.

CONTACT: homesweethomewrecker (at) gmail (dot) com

“Your home is your launch pad and landing pad...

It’s where you spend almost all of your time. What you do during the day is affected by the health and success of your launch pad. You can’t control the world. But you can control the home. Make your home the place you want it to be. …Get your house in order, and other things will follow." Apartment Therapy’s Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan in ReadyMade